Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include Prussian physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit, who introduced the mercury thermometer, in 1686; English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough in 1727; Scottish reformer Robert Owen in 1771; opera singer Patrice Munsel in 1925 (age 81); singer Bobby Darin in 1936; actress Meg Foster in 1948 (age 58); filmmakers George Lucas in 1944 (age 62) and Robert Zemeckis in 1952 (age 54); and actor Tim Roth in 1961 (age 45).

In 1804, one year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

Also in 1973, six members of the Ned Alday family were shot to death when they interrupted a gang of fugitives ransacking a mobile home in rural Southwest Georgia.

In 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush nominated Robert M. Gates for director of the CIA, a position he was denied four years earlier due to the Iran-Contra investigation.

Also in 1998, a U.S. federal judge dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against a former FBI agent in the 1992 deadly shooting at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

In 2003, sheriff`s deputies in Victoria, Texas, found as many as 100 people stuffed into a truck operated by smugglers of illegal aliens. Nineteen had died of the heat.

In 2004, U.S. authorities released 315 Iraqi prisoners from Baghdad`s Abu Ghraib prison amid the investigation into prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers.

Also in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block gay marriages in Massachusetts, making it the only state at the time to allow same-sex weddings.

In 2005, a powerful earthquake jolted parts of the Indonesian island of Sumatra but there were no reports of casualties, structural damage or tsunamis.

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